


somebody once told me

by oogaboogu



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shrek Fusion, Clarke is a princess, F/F, I can't believe I've done this, Lexa is a "troll", M/M, Murphy is a donkey, there is violence but like the fairytale kind, this is genuinely the most stupid thing i've ever written, we all have fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogaboogu/pseuds/oogaboogu
Summary: In a land far, far away, the cold and ruthless Commander of the Swamp Trolls, Lexa, makes a deal with Prince Finn. If she rescues his would-be bride, Clarke Griffin, from the clutches of a fearsome dragon, she will win back her lands and free her people from the tyranny of Arkadian rule.Between a talking donkey, a spirited princess, and the fact that Lexa isn't quite as heartless as she lets on, the dragon ends up being the least of her problems. Clarke is beautiful, charming, and obviously hiding something, and Lexa's seemingly straightforward quest soon becomes anything but...
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy, Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Finn Collins/Acts of Tomfoolery
Comments: 19
Kudos: 26





	somebody once told me

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even know what to say here. i hope nobody will think less of me. imagine writing a clexa shrek au, and not even a good one. wouldn't be me.
> 
> anyway enjoy xoxo

~~Once upon a time~~ No. ~~In a land far, far away~~ Ugh. Terrible. She crumpled up the page and tossed it into the waste-paper basket. This would never work, using pretty language for a distinctly, delightfully ugly story. She'd be better off starting from the beginning.

She dipped her quill back into the inkwell, and instead began to write the truth of it: _Somebody once told me…_

<><><>

The prince regent was typical of Arkadians, Lexa thought — all flowing, shining hair and big, expressive eyes. Soft in every way. It was embarrassing, really, how thoroughly the Arkadian army had managed to take control of Lexa’s own lands and displace her people, when this was what they called a leader.

More embarrassing still was the fact Lexa was here to begin with, standing in the stuffy throne room, itching under her armour, having come to beseech the clueless little regent for her land back. But Lexa was, above all other things, the Commander of the Swamp Trolls, and she couldn’t let her pride stop her from doing what she needed to do for the good of her people. Even if that was begging for leniency from a regent prince dressed all in red velvet who looked like he could barely swing a sword without causing himself some kind of injury.

“I wish I could help you, I really could,” said Prince Regent Finn, looking mournfully up at her, “but I’m afraid it’s out of my hands. I have no jurisdiction over the army as Prince Regent, and I can’t do anything until such time as I am crowned King. I’ll need to be married to secure the line of succession before that happens. Prince Bellamy has been missing for ten years, but until I’m married, he is still technically heir to the throne. You understand?”

“Get married, then,” Lexa said, bluntly. She knew her people had their own succession rituals that must very well seem bizarre to an outsider, but _marriage?_ How, exactly, would having someone to share one’s bed with make one a better ruler? In Lexa’s view, surely the opposite must be true. Love was a distraction; she had learned that the hard way.

Finn winced. “Well, I _would,_ only my betrothed is currently trapped in the highest room in the tallest tower of a castle guarded by a fearsome dragon, and I’m not permitted to rescue her in case I happen to die on the way.” He leaned forward a little, glancing around the empty throne room, as though he were afraid spies were hiding somewhere, listening. She found his suspicion oddly reassuring — the prince regent clearly wasn’t as big an idiot as he looked. “Prince Bellamy going missing is bad enough, but if I were to die, the Arkadian crown would fall into the hands of our northern cousins in the Ice Nation.” He shuddered. “Not good.”

“What if I were to rescue your betrothed?” Lexa interrupted. “I could deliver her safely to you, in exchange for your promise that you will remove all Arkadian soldiers from my swamplands?”

Prince Regent Finn’s eyes shone. “You would do that?”

“I would do anything to ensure the safety and wellbeing of my people,” Lexa replied, a little stiffly. Finn looked like he might hug her, and she didn't want that.

The prince regent stood up, and extended his hand. “Then we have a deal, Commander Lexa of the Swamp Trolls. Rescue my fiancée, Clarke Griffin, from the terrible dragon, and I will ensure that your people are safe and your borders restored.”

She took his hand, and found it to be soft and tender in her own — a hand that had never known hard work, the grip of a weapon, the handle of an axe or even a broom. It should sicken her, but there was something a little harried about Prince Regent Finn, despite his softness, like he knew just how out of his depth he really was. There was a metaphorical sword dangling over his head, ready at any moment to become literal, and he was both well aware of the danger and at a loss for how to stop it. 

She quickly dismissed the thought, and let Finn’s hand go. Empathy for the _de facto_ leader of the nation that was displacing her own wouldn’t do her or her people any good. She would slay the dragon, rescue the girl, and deliver her safe and sound back to her cushy little castle. And then, hopefully, Lexa and her people could be done with Arkadia forever.

<><><>

Lexa hadn’t made it a mile outside the city gates before her soft heart had gotten her into trouble again. 

It was ridiculous — she was a swamp troll, all wild tangles of hair and black-lined eyes, _not_ some heroic knight in shining armour (kindly disregarding the fact that she was, quite literally, on a quest to rescue a princess). All the same, the terrified donkey’s squeals proved impossible to ignore. Lexa prided herself on her hard heart, her ability to do what needed to be done, no matter the cost, but she wasn’t cruel. She could hardly stand by, and let some poor, innocent beast be tormented, not when she could put a stop to it. What sort of leader would that make her?

The teenage boys in the village had surrounded it in a loose circle, and were chanting something that sounded like “Talk! Talk! Talk! Talk!” Several were poking it with sticks. As Lexa strode toward the scene, she saw the donkey snap a mouthful of yellow teeth down on one unfortunate boy’s finger, only to have another child whip it on the flank with a vicious looking leather swatch.

“Leave it alone!” she commanded, pushing past the gaggle of teenage boys. “Didn’t you ever learn to pick on someone your own size?” 

Lexa was not quite as big as some of her guards in Polis, or the soldiers in the Swamp outposts, but as a swamp-troll she was still much taller than the biggest of the human boys. They all took one wide-eyed look at her sharp teeth and kohl-drenched eyes, before they abruptly turned tail and ran, sticks and whips abandoned in the mud behind them.

The donkey shook itself from head to tail with a snort, as if it were shaking itself loose from their taunts, before craning its head around to examine its own bruised behind. There was something eerily human-like about the mournful, self-pitying jut of its lower lip; almost like a child that had just been spanked.

“You poor thing,” Lexa murmured, reaching down to undo the knot of its bridle and free it from the fence it was tied to. “There you go.”

She would have been perfectly happy to leave it there, her heroism quota filled for the day, only for the fact that the donkey — a stout, brown, tombstone-toothed, perfectly ordinary _donkey_ — looked up at her and said, begrudgingly, “Thanks.”

She took a step back. “You can _talk!”_

“I’ve been told that it’s getting me to shut up that's the trick.” The donkey sniffed, one side of its mouth hooking up into a crooked grin. “What’s the matter? You look as though you've never seen a talking donkey before.”

Lexa stared at it — or _him_ , she supposed, going by the voice. He stared back, head tilted up. There was something very defiant about him. If she’d been back in Polis, and he had given her that look, and was not a donkey, she’d definitely have had him punished for insolence. “Are you mocking me? Of course I haven’t seen a _talking donkey_ before!”

“Hey, you’re a troll.” The donkey’s ears pricked up. “What are you doing in Arkadia? I mean, you’ve seen how they treat fairytale creatures like us here.” His tail flicked, and he smelled faintly of manure.

“I am nothing like you,” Lexa said, firmly, before turning to leave.

“Hey! Hold up! You were really something back there — that big roar — sending them all scurrying home with their tails between their legs! Not that they have tails, unlike me, you know. Wait! Do trolls have tails? You’re a little bigger and a little greener than an ordinary girl, and you’ve got those odd ears, but—”

She sighed, dramatically, cutting him off. “Listen, little donkey—”

“The name’s Murphy, actually.”

She gritted her teeth. Maybe she should have just minded her own business and left him to be poked to death by sticks. “Listen, _Murphy_ , I’m glad you survived your encounter with the town bullies, but I’ve got a lot of ground to cover before sundown, and I’m really not interested in chitchat.”

“Great! Me neither. We can march on, stoic and silent! Where is it, exactly, that we’re going?”

Lexa stopped dead, trying very hard not to snap. She was the Commander, and here she was, rescuing donkeys and begging for favours from foreign kings. She took one deep breath in, and one deep breath out, before she turned back to the eager donkey.

“There is no _we._ I rescued you, you thanked me, now we can both go our separate ways and forget this ever happened. Is that clear?”

The donkey, Murphy, visibly deflated. Lexa refused to feel bad.

“Fine,” he said. “I see how it is. No solidarity between fairytale creatures, not even in the face of persecution.”

“That’s just how it is,” Lexa agreed, flatly. She left him standing there on the side of the road, head low and dejected, and didn’t once look back — no matter how much she might have wanted to.

<><><>

She was nearly at the volcano by the time she realised she was being followed, which was unusual, because Lexa was no amateur warrior-troll. She could usually sniff out enemies from miles away. She slowed, and slipped behind a nearby trunk. Swamp trolls were very naturally adept at camouflage, having a faintly green tinge to the skin, and Lexa was an exceptionally patient hunter. She was happy to lie in wait.

She heard him coming before she saw him, though admittedly, he was remarkably quiet for a stupid donkey. Had she not been listening for him, she’s certain she would have missed him. She didn’t pause to think about it.

He trotted into the clearing, and she sprung. Her sword was at his throat in an instant, and he shrieked in alarm.

“Why,” she hissed, “are you following me?”

Murphy let out a long, hay-scented breath, his nostrils flaring, as his eyes swivelled down to where the point of the blade pressed against the soft fur and paper-thin skin of his throat. When he took a step back, away from the point of the blade, Lexa took a step forward to match.

“You really are a mean, green, fighting machine, huh?” he laughed, nervously.

“Murphy.”

“Okay, fine!” Murphy snuffled—a very mulish sound. “I know you don't like me, you made that _abundantly_ clear, but I can be very useful. I also had nothing better to do.”

“Not enough green pastures or lady-donkeys around Arkadia City?” she said, sceptically, but she lowered her sword nonetheless. “Cut the crap, Murphy. Why were you following me? And how could you be so sneaky about it?”

“I said, I had nothing better to do,” Murphy said, firmer, “and besides, I meant what I said before. Fairytale creatures ought to stick together.”

“And I _also_ meant what I said before,” said Lexa. “You and I are _nothing_ alike.”

“Exactly! It’s what makes us such a great team.” Murphy preened. “Just think about it — Big-Sword-Troll-Girl and gallant donkey Murphy, off on a whirlwind cross-country adventure. You bring the battle prowess, I bring the scintillating commentary. It’s a match made in heaven!”

“You just want my protection, don't you?” Lexa sighed. “Are you really that bad at staying out of trouble on your own?”

Murphy slumped, ears drooping. “Like you wouldn't believe.”

She sighed, again. She felt like she'd been doing far too much sighing lately. “If I leave, will you follow me again?”

“Absolutely.”

She glared at him, unimpressed. “And there's no way to stop you?”

“Nope.” He popped the _p._ Her annoyance only grew.

“You are a pest and a parasite.”

Murphy grinned. “Not to worry, I’ve been called much worse.”

“Fine. You can come. As long as you shut up.”

“I will! Oh, I will! Donkey’s honour!”

<><><>

Murphy chattered all the way to the volcano. Lexa contemplated murder. Fortunately, as they came upon the rickety rope-bridge suspended over a boiling lake of lava—the only path to the black hulking castle, all turrets and soot-stained stone—she realised there was no need for such a grisly revenge: instead, she could just make Murphy go first.

“Oh no. Oh no. No way.”

“Yes, way.” She flashed him her most wicked grin. “I thought you _wanted_ to come along.”

He spluttered, indignant, holding his tail stiffly out behind him. “Yeah, well, you conveniently never mentioned there would be _lava!”_

“Oh, the lava’s nothing. Wait until we get to the dragon.”

“The— _Lexa!”_

“Don’t fret, little donkey. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

His ears pricked up. “Really?”

“No. Now, go.” She gave him a firm push out onto the first rotting plank of wood; parts of it eaten away by age and heat. It held firm under his weight with only a minor creak, and she released a breath. Murphy may be a pain in the ass — or more accurately a pain _of_ an ass — but she found herself realising that she would rather he not die. Not enough to _not_ make him go first, though. Her new-found generosity toward her four-legged companion had its limits.

Murphy huffed. “You wound me.” 

He did, however, begin carefully picking his way further across the bridge without another word of protest.

The heat rising from below them was immense, hitting them like a physical blow; sweat trickled unpleasantly down the back of Lexa's neck, and she squinted against the steam and the red glow from underneath. Murphy’s fur was damp around the shoulders and the neck, though Lexa suspected terror was as much to blame as the hot air was.

A crack, and a shriek from Murphy, and a plank of wood gave out from under his feet. Lexa grabbed him by the tail, holding him fast, and they both watched as the rotten plank plummeted down, in what felt like slow motion, to be swallowed by the bubbling inferno below.

“Just keep moving. And don't look down,” Lexa advised.

Murphy visibly gulped, before shaking his fear away and taking another step further onto the rope-bridge, which swayed alarmingly under his weight.

“Murphy. We want to reach the castle before next week.”

Murphy scoffed. “Well, if you're so insistent, _you_ can go first!”

Lexa gave his tail an impatient tug. She was still holding it. With another huff, Murphy began picking his way onward, and Lexa kindly ignored the terrified tremble in his stubby little legs. She did not let go of his tail, and Murphy did not ask her to, and after one further close call with a rotten plank, they both made it to the other side without any loss of life, limb, or liberty.

Murphy immediately collapsed onto the paving stones of the castle entrance. “You’re the meanest swamp troll I’ve ever met,” he said, pointing an accusatory hoof her direction. “Bad enough being—” Whatever he had been about to say was cut off when he suddenly _brayed_ , a loud and rasping sort of noise, like a honest-to-gods non-talking donkey. Lexa winced; annoying as his capacity for speech was, she vastly preferred it over that earsplitting noise.

Murphy, on the other hand, didn't seem too disturbed by his brief relapse into non-verbal animalhood. He merely stood up, huffed noisily, and said, “Never mind that. Anyway, I don’t know why I even agreed to come along on this stupid quest!”

Lexa chose not to point out that _he_ was the one who insisted upon accompanying her to the castle. Instead, she just shrugged. “Too late to back out now.” 

She adjusted her shoulder plate and wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, gazing up at the castle which loomed over them. The dark narrow windows reminded her eerily of eyes in its jagged face; a single yellow light glimmered gold at the top of the tallest tower. There was neither sight nor sound of the princess, nor the dragon. She wondered if Clarke Griffin was expecting any rescuers.

That question was answered the minute she dragged Murphy through the front door, and her boot crunched beneath her. With a pre-emptive grimace, she looked down, and saw white shards of bones lying cracked and discarded at her feet. That wasn't the only one, either; the entire grim entrance hall was littered with half-decomposed skeletons and loose plates of rusting armour. Lexa didn’t want to count them, but at least a decade’s worth of would-be rescuers had made their graves here, bodies broken, twisted and burned.

“That’ll be the dragon’s handiwork,” she whispered.

“Oh, great. This day just keeps on getting better and better,” Murphy grumbled. “Where is this princess, anyway?”

“Shh,” Lexa warned him, creeping carefully forward, avoiding any corpses underfoot. “She’ll be in the highest room of the tallest tower.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Read it in a book once,” she whispered, sarcastically, peering around a crumbling column of obsidian stone. Steam rose between cracks in the floor, and the only light was tinged red, filtering up from the fire below. The coast was clear, which worried her a bit. Surely a huge dragon couldn’t find it that easy to hide...

“Really? I didn’t know trolls could read.”

She turned and, her views on animal cruelty damned, cuffed him between the ears. “And _I_ didn't know donkeys could _talk._ Anyway, I was joking. The regent prince told me she’d be here.”

“Huh. And why didn’t he come rescue his girlfriend himself?”

Lexa shrugged. “Didn’t want to ruin his hair.” She didn’t think _that_ low of Prince Finn, but she was hardly going to get into the complexities of leadership with a donkey who, with an anxious cry of “Lexa! A little help here!”, had just managed to get his hoof hopelessly jammed in a crack in the floor.

“Can’t you do _anything_ yourself?” she half-whispered, half-hissed, hurrying over to help him dislodge it.

He made a squawk of protest, and as soon as she had freed his hoof, trotted away around the opposite corner. “Fine! If you’re so insistent, I _will!_ I’ll go and find the way to your precious princess and precious tower by _myself_ — just you wait! _”_

Like the plank falling loose from the swaying rope-bridge, Lexa could almost see it happening in slow motion. Time slowed down, and sped up, all at once, and all of centred around the stubborn brown donkey crossing through dark shadow and under black pillar, incongruous as a buttercup in a wasteland, marching surely toward his death.

“Murphy!” she called after him, in the lowest voice she knew would still carry. “Watch out for the—”

Murphy stopped dead, staring at something around the corner that she couldn’t see. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. Then, he was turning and running, with a wild cry of: _“DRAGON!”_

A livid orange wall of flame engulfed the spot Murphy had been standing only a moment before. He hurtled into her, and together they rushed down the hallway furthest from the angry dragon, its earsplitting, heartstopping roar dogging their steps. Lexa heard a tell-tale crackle, and only just managed to sidestep behind a column, grab Murphy around the middle and hoist his flailing body out of the way out of a stream of red-hot fire that would surely have incinerated them to ash. Lexa could smell the acrid tang of burning hair — her’s or Murphy’s, she couldn't tell.

The dragon let out another horrific screech, rocketing down the corridor, past them in a glimmer of jade-green scales and steaming nostrils, its every step so heavy it shook the ground beneath them. Lexa held her breath, the hand that wasn’t clutching Murphy’s rotund middle clenched on the handle of her sword, but it didn't look like the dragon had seen them. It crashed through the doors only metres away, hurling itself bodily into the castle courtyard with a furious burst of flame.

“Did you see _that_?” Murphy whispered, breathless, and Lexa dropped him to his feet. “I was almost turned into barbecue, Lexa! This is so much worse than being poked by a couple sticks—I don’t know _what_ I was thinking—”

“You distract him! I’ll attack from behind!” she ordered gruffly, not waiting to listen to his reply before she was slipping out from behind the pillar to creep down the hall toward the door, sword in hand, keeping an eye on the dragon in the courtyard all the while. He was turning in circles in the open space as he looked for them, reminding her unsettlingly of a dog chasing its own tail — only with significantly more teeth. She wondered if her sword would even make a dent through its glittering scales, its flashing yellow eyes. It was going to be like trying to kill a bear with a sewing needle, and she cursed Murphy for his foolishness, again. She’d been hoping to make like a burglar by sneaking in, grabbing the princess, and getting out, all without having to meet the overgrown lizard at all.

Murphy!

He had, typically, entirely ignored her order, and was instead trying to pick his way over the red-hot paving stones that led back the way they came. The floor had just been superheated by the dragon's flame, and was clearly burning the crap out of his hooves, going by the way he was hopping, but he seemed entirely determined to reach the front door before the dragon came back.

This did not work.

Because, while Lexa had been staring with a mixture of shock, disbelief, and fury at Murphy's furry bottom as he all but _ran away,_ she wasn't paying attention to their primary problem: the ferocious dragon.

—The ferocious dragon whose yellow eye was peering through a crack in the black stone above.

His gaze was fixed upon Murphy, whose indignant hopping over the hot coals was reminiscent of some bizarre kind of tap-dance. Murphy, of course, hadn't even noticed.

“Murphy,” she warned.

“Lexa, I told you I’m not cut out for this hero crap — not when it could turn me into dragon dinner — and much as I do admire you and everything you stand for, I don't think our friendship or the solidarity between fairytale creatures is so strong that I’m willing to be grilled alive for the good of your quest, no matter how noble—”

“Murphy, look up.”

Murphy, hopping in place, looked up, and let out a stream of words that no respectable donkey ought to know.

The dragon reared back and smashed his head through the crack, with a roar and another jet of flame.

Fairytale creature solidarity falling short once again, Lexa didn’t wait to see if Murphy was cooked where he stood. Instead she took her chance, and sprinted down the hallway and into the courtyard, where the dragon’s green tail was writhing back and forth. With a wild battle-cry, she leapt onto the tail as it swung wildly, stabbing her sword deep between the green scales and into the dragon’s flesh with a disgusting sort of squelch.

Then she was flying.

In response to being poked with a sword the size of a needle, the dragon had reflexively thrown his tail up in the air, and Lexa with it. Her grip on the handle of her sword came loose, and suddenly she found herself suspended in mid-air—she was falling—she was going to _die_ and it was all fucking Murphy’s fault—she—

Roof tiles rose to meet her. She barely had time to brace for impact.

She crashed through the roof of the highest room of the tallest tower of the castle guarded by the fearsome green dragon, and landed — in a cloud of dust and broken roof-tile, and with a breathless little bounce — straight onto Clarke Griffin’s bed.

<><><>

Backed into a corner, and with a grievously singed tail, Murphy stared his death in its ugly yellow eye. The dragon opened his fearsome maw wide, and he tried not to let out (another) undignified shriek.

“Oh, what large teeth you have!” he cried, cowering back against the wall — because what use was there in being a donkey that could talk, if his quick tongue failed him in a time like this?

The dragon growled — _miserably?_

Murphy paused. It didn't try to eat him for the duration of that pause, which he noted with relief.

“Or — not large teeth?” he tried. “Very white, very healthy teeth — your dentist must be thrilled! And your scales — look how they glitter! I’ve never seen a dragon like you!”

The dragon paused. He cocked his head to look at Murphy, and Murphy cocked his head to look at the dragon.

Murphy was a firm believer that fairytale creatures ought to look out for one another — or at least he was when it suited him. But Murphy wasn’t quite a fairytale creature in the strictest sense of the word.

Nor, as it turned out, was the dragon. And while Murphy was banned from talking about his curse, he wasn't banned from talking about the curses of others. And, as it happened, he really did excel at talking. 

He peered a little closer at the green dragon, looking past the fire and the scales and the bloodlust and the teeth, until the curse cracked and he could peer at what lay underneath. 

“... Prince Bellamy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading this, which is truthfully not the silliest thing i have ever done, but is definitely up there. part 2, you'll be glad to know, may take some time as i wrestle with the demons that drove me to this


End file.
